TAMPA, Fla. — Yankees starter Phil Hughes is approaching a major payday as a free agent next year — as long as he can stay healthy. He sat down with The Star-Ledger recently to discuss how he’s approaching his future, what offseason adjustments he made and what he has learned from the veterans on staff.

1. So what’s it like approaching free agency?

“Yeah, it’s a little strange. I don’t know any other organization besides this. It’s definitely a strange, exciting sort of time. But at least for now my focus is on this year. It’s easy to stay focused on the task at hand, because we’re in spring training. I know how long the season is, and how long spring is. It’s easy to stay focused on what I need to do this year.”
2. After your freak injury in 2011, when you spent 82 days on the disabled list with shoulder inflammation and fatigue, how have you changed your workout routines?

“It’s been an adjustment. My offseason routine is always kind of evolving. I think in years past, it was just lift, run, stay in shape. A lot of what I do now is geared toward what I want to accomplish during the season. Because conditioning is key, and leg strength and things like that. Mechanically, last year, I went through some times where I had some issues going on with my mechanics. So this offseason I really focused on shoulder mobility, things like that.”

3. What sort of exercises do you do for that?

“It’s not necessarily exercises. I did a lot of physical therapy stuff before I trained this offseason. I worked with someone in my training program, (active release technique therapy), just to be a little more mobile, especially in my upper body.

4. Is it weird being a young guy, like you are at 26, and dealing with all the wear and tear of pitching?

“It is a little strange. But I think that has to do with starting my career early. It’s the wear and tear that you go through. CC (Sabathia) was joking that somebody told him he was on the back end of his career. He was like, ‘I’m 32!’ In the business world, 32, that’s young.”

5. How often do you pick Sabathia’s brain during the season?

“I sit next to CC on the plane. We talk about the previous starts. A lot of times during the course of a series, more often than not, we’re going to both pitch in it. Simple math equation. We’re talking about starts, or what he saw, or what I saw from him. We play catch together. So he’s always asking me if this is doing this or that.”

6. How would you compare the pitcher you are now to the one you were a few years ago?

“I feel like every year, you’re evolving a little bit. There’s always different adjustments that the year takes on. . . . If I can take physically what I had (during 2009 and 2010) and incorporate a little more savvy into that, maybe even a little more guile, competitive edge, whatever you want to call it. I feel like I can take that next step. My goal this offseason was to physically get back to what I was then.”

7. Are you disappointed with 2012? It was a successful year in a lot of ways.

“Yeah, and unsuccessful in a few ways as well. I look at the start I got off to — if I can not do that again, I think that would help me out a lot. Obviously, giving up the most home runs in the American League (actually second to Ervin Santana) is something I’d like to cut down on. There’s always negatives with the positives. If I just sit here and am content with what I did, there’s nowhere to go but down.”

8. Some players, when they approach free agency, refuse to talk about it. Why are you open about discussing it?

“For me personally, I’m not going to worry about it. If I have to answer questions about it, I have to answer questions about it. It’s such an easy distraction to deal with it. It’s an exciting time in your career. There’s a lot of distractions that we go through that are a lot harder to deal with than this.”

9. Like what?

“The tough distractions are you haven’t been pitching well, and you may need to make a change, and somebody’s coming up who might be better than you — those are the things that are tough to deal with it. I mean, this is hopefully something that’s fun to deal with, and easy to deal with.”